


Citrus Fingertips

by PikaB119



Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asta doesn't actually make a physical appearance, Crack Treated Seriously, Don't read too much into the title, Gen, I Still Don't Know How To Tag!, I think there might be some angst if you squint really hard and maybe tilt your head???, Possible OOC-ness, a lot of things get implied, but Asta does get mentioned a lot so..., several other characters get mentioned too, the first tag isn't all that important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 21:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18484582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaB119/pseuds/PikaB119
Summary: "I don't know..."Where Yuno stumbles upon William Vangence while strolling through the Golden Dawn base, stumbles for a bit down memory lane, and then tells his captain a story.Or: An excuse for me to writemorecrack!





	Citrus Fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, I did try to keep everyone as in character as I could, but this is mostly self-indulgent crack born from my need to have more Black Clover fics on this site. And it is, at the very least, _sprinkled_ with my own personal head cannons that I've been nursing since I first re-discovered this particular manga/anime.
> 
> This is also a low-key experiment to see if I can write a one-shot without mentioning a character's gender and simultaneously keep the writing from taking a nosedive off a very tall cliff. Fingers crossed that I did okay!

* * *

**_Citrus Fingertips_ **

* * *

 

The scent of oranges wafts through the air like an afterthought; a faded memory carried on a crisp, fall breeze. Yuno assumes he’s only imagining things at first. That his sleep-deprived, touch-starved brain finally broke from the loneliness or something equally trivial and now he’s homesick and hallucinating in the middle of the hallway.

Asta would laugh, Yuno’s certain, but he’ll admit that he misses Hage and the church like he never thought he would before he left. The Golden Dawn aren’t the Black Bulls, after all. And while they aren’t bad people, the rank and file nobility that makes up most of its numbers are a far cry from the farmers and deadbeats Yuno grew up with.

(Even Nash has more humility than some of the people Yuno deals with on a daily basis, and Nash is ten years old and thinks he knows  _ everything _ .)

So it comes as a sort of mixed blessing, when he turns a corner and realizes that he hasn’t cracked almost nine months into his tenor as a magic knight.

“Ah, Yuno! –What brings you here, if I might ask?”

For the record, the Golden Dawn’s base is less a functioning headquarters, and more a moderately decorated, ridiculously spacious mansion that they all just happen to live in. Not quite the sprawling castle that the Silver Eagles apparently call home, but in size alone, it’s a very close thing.

Yuno’s first day alone was spent trying to get him decently acquainted with the layout. And while he hadn’t been paying a lick of attention to the senior squad member placed in charge of him (some bland, faceless noble with the kind of vocabulary that would’ve put little Aruru right to sleep) he’d counted no less than ten “ballrooms” with enough space to throw a birthday party for every Royal in the capital and still have room left to spare.

Between that and the general busyness that comes with being the strongest magic knight squad in the entirety of Clover, and it’s normally impossible to stumble across someone you weren’t looking for to start with.

“—Captain Vangence, sir,” he greets, if only just barely remembering his manners between the baseline shock of stumbling across another human being when he was trying to avoid people and the still-there scent of citrus fruit curling in his nose. “Just out for a bit of a walk.”

He won’t admit that he was driven out of his room by Bell, mid-temper tantrum because Yuno refused to go on a date with her and that apparently gave her a good reason to tear everything apart with a miniature tornado.

“Isn’t your room on the other side of the building?” Yuno winces, unable to lie though he doesn’t think the man’s expecting an answer. “It’s a bit far to walk, but then again, I can’t say I have a right to judge.”

Before he was partnered with Mimosa and Klaus, William Vangence was a rock; steady, growing familiar and there even when the man was clearly swamped with work.

(No Asta, but Yuno doesn’t think anyone could match up to his foster sibling, and he doubts he’d like it very much if anyone tried.)

He’s a good man, and Yuno doesn’t mind following him for now. “Out on a stroll yourself, sir?”

“No, not this time,” Vangence admits with a faint chuckle.

Somewhere in the distance, Yuno hears Klaus yelling; either looking for him without Mimosa’s help, looking for Mimosa herself, or tearing into something or other for reasons that’ll escape him so long as he remains where he currently is. He has a half a mind to go check and make sure nothing’s managed to catch fire somehow, but it’s Klaus. For all the man’s various quirks, he’s Golden Dawn and level-headed enough to not get himself into trouble in his own base.

“Oh, then what were you…?” Yuno blinks, stunned silent halfway through his question.

It’s the scent of oranges again, riding the gentle breeze passing through the courtyard and wrapping around Yuno like a warm blanket. Sending him back five years, ten years; until he’s four years old and watching from the imaginary safety of Father Orsi’s robe as Asta disappears into the not-quite-tamed jungle of the back garden, coming back with orange balls (mandarins, he remembers Sister Lily telling him later) cradled in both hands and fingertips smelling of citrus.

He’s still remembering how sweet they tasted with Asta beaming like the sun in front of him when a hand firmly placed on his shoulder brings him blinking back into reality.

“—Yuno?” Yuno can tell that the man’s probably been trying to get Yuno’s attention for at least a few minutes. Likely, he surprised him just… disappearing like that. But Yuno doesn’t think he could’ve helped it.

All of his strongest, happiest memories from his childhood are connected to Asta in some way. And while it’s embarrassing to have it happen in front of others, Yuno doesn’t want to hide his love of his foster sibling, even when Asta seems absolutely determined to give him a heart attack when the other isn’t simply driving him up the wall.

“Sorry, just…”

“You don’t need to apologize, but you looked… well, you were smiling, but you seemed sad as well. Everything okay?”

For a brief moment, Yuno considers lying. He’s not ashamed of Asta (far from it in fact) and he doesn’t think Vangence would call him out on it or be upset with him. But the memories are personal, and Yuno has always been a tad sentimental.

“I smelled the oranges.” He motions to the bag at Vangence’s hip and  _ tries  _ not to make it too obvious when he tucks into himself in order to hide the blush threatening to spring across his cheeks. But it’s apparently the least of the man’s worries.

Even with the mask to hide the majority of his expression, Vangence looks genuinely lost. So Yuno elaborates; “—The church had this… I’d call it a garden, but,” he flounders a little, motioning to the courtyard behind them.

It’s beautiful. Bright and vibrant greens sprinkled with a veritable rainbow of flowers and what Yuno now realizes are slightly out of season fruits. It looks like something straight out of one of Recca’s old picture books, and compared to that? –That small patch of earth and overgrown weeds hidden behind the church probably shouldn’t count. “—Anyways, it was kind of impossible to control, and I’m pretty sure we were growing more weeds than anything, and…”

“The oranges reminded you of it?”

“Not quite.” Yuno’s never shared this story before. Nash and the others hadn’t come into the picture until several years later. And by the time any of them had been old enough to care, the garden had become a distant memory as Yuno strove to get stronger and Asta disappeared for increasing lengths of time. He probably never would’ve spared it a second thought if he hadn’t run into Captain Vangence today. “—When Asta and I were little, Father Orsi would take us there to play while he tended to some of the plants.”

Vangence hums, herding him in probably the least forceful way Yuno’s ever seen into the courtyard. It’s strangely peaceful, when Yuno takes a moment to think about everything that has happened since then.

Between becoming a magic knight, the training and missions, and the repeated attacks on multiple fronts (Yuno doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive the Eye of the Midnight Sun for breaking Asta’s arms, even if the problem has since been fixed and the bastard who caused it is long dead.) peace feels more and more fleeting. The chaos only grows worse the longer the Eye of the Midnight Sun are allowed to run free.

Yuno knows they’re doing the best they can right now, but even though it looks like they might be able to eek out a win even in their worst-case scenario, Yuno still feels like something bad is going to happen.

“Asta was always a lot braver than me, I think.” A lot more energetic too, though he’s not sure if he’d have called Asta emotional. Father Orsi had described his foster sibling as an energetic, happy baby when they’d asked him, but even back then, something had always struck him as off.

Asta leads with a heart worn on ragged sleeves, and that hasn’t changed much since they were both children. But… now Yuno’s certain he’s overthinking it. “Father Orsi was always telling us to stay within earshot, but Asta’d run off into shrubbery. Never went very far, I don’t think. Always came back a few minutes later… —and most of the time with fruit. Specifically this weird kind of mandarin.”

“Clearly this Father Orsi wasn’t completely without a green thumb.” It’s supposed to be a joke, and Yuno can’t help the brief chuckle that escapes him as he sits down on one of the stone benches lining the parameter. There’s a flowering tree that definitely isn’t native to the land of Clover and he presses back against the sun-warm bark.

“Well, that was the odd thing.” he admits, watching as the captain meanders over to a different plant entirely; pushing mana into the bark and through the soil until one of the branches blooms and drops two of the ugliest looking oranges Yuno’s ever seen into the man’s awaiting hand.

Admittedly, Yuno probably should’ve seen it coming from a mile away. But he isn’t entirely prepared when Vangence tosses one at him before  “Father Orsi isn’t completely hopeless at the whole gardening thing, but his element’s fire, not earth or wood or plant. I didn’t think much of it at the time… –I thought it was just a really sweet orange actually. But then I showed one to Sister Lily.”

Vangence hums as he starts peeling the fruit, leaning against a nearby pillar. “So then, what was it exactly?”

“Apparently one of these.” He admits, lifting up the already half-peeled fruit, before taking a slice and popping it into his mouth. “When I told her about how Asta’d brought it back from the garden, she was really confused. –Turns out we didn’t have any plants that bore these kinds of fruits.”

“Remind me; Asta is the mana-less child from the exam, yes? –The one with the anti-magic swords?”

“For as long as we’ve known each other…”

“If Asta has no magic,” and Vangence’ tone isn’t one that Yuno would describe as insulting. Hell, the question isn’t even phrased threateningly. But something about the way the captain sounds raises Yuno’s metaphorical hackles. “Then where did it come from?”

Yuno pauses, thinking; remembering every instance where Asta’d done something slightly unusual or kind of inexplicable. He’d always just signed it off as Asta being Asta. Like it wasn’t weird that a child born without the ability to use mana or cast even the most rudimentary of spells could wander off into a garden with barely enough room for the weeds to grow and come back with fruit.

_ With citrus fingertips… _

“—I don’t know.”

**Author's Note:**

> So for anyone curious as to the headcanons I said I threw in earlier, there's at least two of them I can remember of the top of my head;
> 
> 1) _Because Asta was born without mana, the range of emotions Asta could experience early on was limited._ It's might not be very apparent -and I know that it's not actually the case- but I'm a little fond of the idea that early on in life, Asta actually had trouble expressing emotions like everyone else. Like the only reason we see him as a happy child when he is younger, is because that's one of the few emotions he knows how to mimic consistently.
> 
> It's... also maybe possible that I've been watching and reading too much Bungo Stray Dogs though.
> 
> 2) _Asta actually has mana/some weird ability, it's just hard to detect if you don't know what you're supposed to be looking for. And **nobody** knows what they're supposed to be looking for._
> 
> Basically, Asta has some weird, _possibly_ magic ability, but because Asta doesn't emit any mana ~~spoiler: in canon, it's a birth defect I believe~~ whenever something weird happens (i.e. showing up with mysterious fruit with no obvious origin) people just dismiss it as coincidence or luck.
> 
> It's really easy for everyone to ignore because it's usually small, inane things that most people probably wouldn't pay attention to anyways.
> 
> I like to think that in some alternate universe, Asta did a lot of these weird, seemingly inexplicable things growing up, but somehow failed to realize he was casting magic.


End file.
